Introduction

So far this book has focused on the majority of the working classes who are set up to fail in English education. This chapter focuses on the minority who are seen to succeed academically, the working classes who are socially mobile through education. In doing so it attempts to unpick the challenges in putting clever and working class together (as opposed to the endlessly bright middle and upper classes). The chapter also engages with the painful compromises that can arise if you are working class and educationally successful.

Social mobility has an iconic place in English political discourse. It appears as if the less mobility there is, the more it becomes a preoccupation of politicians and policy makers. It is nearly always seen in straightforwardly positive ways, particularly within political, policy and media discourses. In contrast, this chapter argues that it constitutes a problematic solution to educational inequalities where the negatives have consistently threatened to undermine the positives. In the first part of the chapter these problematic aspects are explored in the 1950s and 1960s, the period in which I was growing up and the time that Jackson and Marsden were writing about; I then draw on case studies relating to the 1980s and the more recent period of my own research.

The 21st century has seen an opening up of new educational horizons for the educationally successful working-class. Yet, at the same time, social mobility is a process that is constantly troubled by questions of differential values and valuing. It is also one in which the working classes are seriously disadvantaged by their lack of access to privileged social networks. Recent governments, Labour, Conservative and Coalition, have viewed creating aspiring students as more effective, and clearly cheaper, than putting money into education. Yet again, as I have argued in earlier chapters, this constitutes a policy approach that makes the working classes responsible for their own educational success without providing them with the resources to make that success possible.

The second part of the chapter unpicks the assumption that more working-class young people going to university is an unmitigated success, and examines the extent to which a working-class student’s degree has the same value as a middle- or upper-class student’s degree in the 21st century.